Electrical conductors are well known in the prior art and have been in use for many years. Such prior art electrical conductors typically have a termination on at least one end thereof to connect the conductor with another electrical element. Such a termination typically has been obtained by coupling a separate piece (a contact) to the conductor. This disadvantageously necessitated the separate manufacture and inventory of separate contacts and the installation of such a separate contact to the conductor in order to couple the contact with the conductor. Installation of the contact additionally required the preparation of the conductor to couple it with the contact. The separate manufacturing and storing in inventory steps and the preparation of the conductor adds undesirable expense to the process of manufacturing a conductor. The preparation and assembly requires either the time of the workman or of the machine, both of which add expense to the manufacturing process. Furthermore, the connection between a conductor and a contact is itself undesirable in that it adds electrical resistance to the circuit, where a lower resistance is usually desirable.
Furthermore, the making and assembling of separate pieces entails a multiple inspection of the individual pieces separately and then assembled. The additional pieces provide additional sources of potential failures and unacceptable products.
Prior art electrical conductor terminations "contacts" are sleeve like members having a forward mating portion and a rear wire receiving portion. An electrical conductor having a plurality of wires is connected to the respective wires in another conductor by inserting each wire into the wire receiving portion of a contact and then connecting the mating end of each contact on one conductor to respective contacts on another conductor. One such electrical contact is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,844 to McKeown et al for "Hermaphroditic Electrical Contact", a patent which is assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The contact described in that patent has acutely angled end surfaces for mating with a similar contact in electrical circuit relationship. Such a contact has limitations similar to the other contacts discussed above, in that the contact consists of several pieces, each separate from the conductor and assembly of the contact as well as the contact with the conductor is required. Further, the forward portion of the electrical conductor must be prepared for insertion within the sleeve.